


12 Light Minutes

by canisbaileyilupus, maddymayscrawls



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Chatting & Messaging, Galra Keith (Voltron), M/M, POV Alternating, Slow Burn, The Space Between Us AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 21:10:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9516446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canisbaileyilupus/pseuds/canisbaileyilupus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/maddymayscrawls/pseuds/maddymayscrawls
Summary: 12 light minutes. Thats the distance between Earth and Mars. But for Keith and Lance, it feels much longer.





	

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance's pov: canisbaileyilupus  
> Keith's pov: maymaychan

[Lance]

Growing up, I learned about other creatures, aliens living among our solar system. I never really paid much attention in class, or that’s what my teachers always thought. I just never took notes, but I still took in the information that was being thrown at me. Certain planets were inhabited by other species in space, but we didn’t really learn about them until I was fourteen. Somehow, they contacted our government and next thing we knew, learning about them was part of our curriculum. It was really tough having to learn a completely new society alongside our own, but I have to admit, it was pretty fun. Even after four years we still don’t know everything. I especially didn’t know just how much these foreign creatures would end up affecting my life in particular. Or, at least, one of them would. It all started in my senior year of high school.

There was an essay I had to write where I had to contact an alien on one of our other planets and become friends with them.

“Someone from another planet huh?” I said under my breath. The other kids in my class whispered to one another about the assignment.

“Now everybody, calm down. This assignment is due in a month, it’ll be for half your grade. You must connect with another species on one of the following planets, Mars, Neptune and Pluto. You need to learn about their culture and customs. Part of this assignment also requires you to video call them for your speech.” Everyone in the room, including myself, groaned.

“Hey, at least it beats reading another dusty book in the library right?” The teacher commented. We all unanimously nodded our heads in agreement. It was gonna be a long month.

Arriving home later that day, I sighed. “A whole month, that’s so annoying…” I commented, throwing my backpack on the floor against my bedframe and laid in bed, facing the ceiling. I’d never talked to an alien before, would they already know our language? Would I need to use a translator? I ruffled my hair, frustrated.  Taking a deep breath, I thought about what to do first.

After dinner, I got onto my laptop and began looking for an alien to talk to, that was my first step.

 

[Keith]

7,000,000 light years. That’s how far I had to travel for this stupid colonization project. Ok, it isn’t that stupid. The Galra are a very rapidly growing species and our original planet is too small to hold all of us. I _get_ it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And I especially don’t have to like how easily my parents seemed to send me off.

“It’ll be an adventure!” They had said, “And we’ll be so proud of our little man braving the new world of Mars all the way in the system of Sol.” Yeah right. They had waited 16 whole years to get rid of their defective son. Signing me up as one of the travelers was just a way for them to speed up the process.

I will admit that it isn’t so bad being on Mars. They had our civilization set up long before we got here, and the first 3 billion citizens to agree to relocate got the first 3 months free, and the following 9 months discounted. They set me up in a nice little apartment that was just big enough for one person. There was a decent school just down the road, and honestly the food they provided wasn’t half bad. Since we were basically just relocating a chunk of our people, technology and all, to a new location life kind of went on as usual. There was even a kid I knew back on the main planet, Lotor, in my class. It’s just that sometimes I still really missed the comforts of home.

It was a month after arriving that the big excitement happened. The governor of the planet made contact with this blue planet a few light minutes away. The contact wasn’t the strange part. It made sense considering it was so close that we wouldn’t even have to wormhole to get there. What was surprising was that there was a species there that actually responded. The higher ups had assumed based on the primitive technology they had that nothing there would be intelligent enough to communicate. The team that had been sent there was originally just supposed to scout for useable resources and possibly report on how habitable the place was. They were shocked when they were confronted by these hairless creatures that looked almost like Alteans, but with funny ears and no markings.

After a bit of tinkering with the frequencies on the translator module they had been able to understand them as well. They called themselves “Humans” and their planet “Earth”. They ran it based on this weird government system where all of the different parts of the planet were split up and apparently different humans acted different based on where they lived on the planet. In fact, I’ve heard rumors that they have wars within their planet based on their little made up regions too. It really makes no sense. Why try to destroy your own species?

Problematic as the little buggers were, they decided not to see our species as a threat. I would have thought that was foolish of them if we were still back at the main planet, but our governor here really was a peaceful guy. So, a shaky relationship was formed between us. It was really difficult for our people to communicate with the humans, though, since we basically had to send someone back and forth between our planets. This apparently prompted them to make a deal where we could have the technology humans use for communicating on mars. If you ask me, it was a pain. It takes up so much space, and we have to _pay_ the humans to use it. Not to mention that I had to be trained in it during school when I could have been learning something much more productive. I didn’t even use the stupid “computer” thing for months after it was given to me, and I couldn’t care less about the “internet” either.

Still, our teachers kept pushing the idea that we should “get to know our neighbors”. The people in charge even had some fancy chatroom made that specifically had Galra talk to Humans. I had absolutely no desire to do this, but as time wore on I got more and more bored with the dusty red planet around me, especially once I was on my own after finishing my compulsory education. In the end curiosity snuck into my mind and I decided to connect just for the hell of it.

 


End file.
